An ABC Tale

Thank you for agreeing to appear in this story. It’s so much more believable when I’m able to use real people, the true-life detail you supply will make it a much better story than I could have invented.

We’ll start the story really simply, I just want you to be sitting at a computer reading a story on ABC Tales. Where you are is fine, it doesn’t matter whether it’s on a PC, laptop or via your mobile, i-pad, whatever. Anything is fine, whatever you’re using.

Obviously the story needs an injection of interest, some action, some danger. You’re reading a story by Terrence Oblong, when you realise that there’s a hidden message within it. Some sort of code, every fourth word, no nothing that simple, but a code you stumble across by chance. You re-read the tale in astonishment, rather than a bland story about nothing in particular you suddenly find detailed instructions for carrying out a terrorist attack. Names, locations, even instructions as to how to make a bomb.

You break into a sweat. You can’t think clearly, nothing like this has ever happened to you before. You make yourself a strong coffee, or a glass of whisky, even a prawn cotail sandwich, you choose. By the time you’ve finished the drink (or sandwich) you know what to do, you go to the admin page of the site and send an email to Tony.

You wait for a while, not sure if Tony’s still on holiday, what happens if nobody reads the email for a month, but within half an hour you’re relieved to see a message from Tony in your email list. He’s reassuring, he’s going straight to the police and will have the story removed. He praises your code breaking skills and thanks you for contacting him.

All seems well. Within ten minutes the story is no longer to be found anywhere on the site. You assume that even now the anti-terror police are swooping in on Terrence and locking him up for his crimes. Who’d have thought, an international terrorist posing as a writer on ABCTales.

You put away your computer/i-pad/whatever and carry on with your day. Maybe it’s time for you to go to bed, maybe it’s time for you to go to work. This is why having a real person as the main character is so exciting, it really is up to you. Surprise youself,go and play on the swings in the local children’s park, dress up in your partner’s clothes for the rest of the day, or simply open a bottle of wine and don’t move until you’ve finished the whole thing.

Of course, such hedonistic joy cannot go on forever. The next day you have to go to work, or maybe you don’t. Do you have to go to school? Or have you retired, is it the weekend? In which case maybe a trip to the shops, or the local bordello.

For whatever reason you leave the house. After a while you get the feeling someone is following you. You steal a glance in a window that reflects the street behind you. Sure enough there is a man you’ve never seen before, a scruffy middle-aged bloke with an unkempt beard.

You hasten along the street and go wherever it is you’re going. When you come out you see the man again, he is just outside, as if waiting for you. Christ, he stinks as well, really bad BO. This time you literally run away from him, as fast as you can manage. Eventually you turn and he is nowhere to be seen, but the whole thing has severely spooked you and spoiled your day.

You don’t know why, but for some reason later that evening you suddenly wonder if the man was Terrence Oblong. A mad idea, but your mind just links the two unusual events from the past two days. You go on google and see if you can find the face of Terrence Oblong. You do so easily, it is not a common name. The picture is a few year’s younger but it is clearly the same man.

Now you are really worried. How could Terrence Oblong have found you? Why is he following you? You phone the police, they already know about the terror message in his stories and will be able to protect you. Except they think you’re a crank. There is no specialist terrorist unit in your town and the normal police refuse to take you seriously. (Of course, if you live in a major city you may be surprised at the absence of a terror unit, but this is one of the weaknesses of this narrative device and I simply ask you to bear with me and imagine what I say to be the case, however unlikely).

Eventually, after ringing many numbers, you are put through to the nation’s terrorist unit. You explain what has happened and they calmly relay to you the fact that they have never received a call from Tony at ABCTales, that they have never heard of Terrence Oblong, that they do not believe you.

Now you are worried. You don’t know who to trust, nobody on ABCTales that’s for sure. You arm yourself: you buy a gun from a contact in the underworld, or secrete a knife about your person, buy yourself a tiger to protect you. Maybe you simply pick up the nearest wooden saucepan just in case.

You go back online and search Terrence Oblong on ABCTales, reading through all of his stories. Most of them make little sense and you are sure that they also contain coded messages, but if they do then it is a different code, one you are unable to break. You go to bed, frustrated.

Over the next days and weeks you remain armed with your knife/gun/saucepan/tiger. You trust no-one. Terrence doesn’t appear again, but everywhere you go you spot strangers looking at you; on the bus, on the train, walking down the street, the hoodie outside your house photographing the rainbow, the nun that calls offering you a leaflet about your soul. Even if you are a reclusive millionaire you notice that your cleaning lady looks a bit different, as if she’d polished her wig. You can’t prove it, but you suspect that all these people are spies from ABCTales. All part of the great ABCTales terrorist conspiracy.

Your worst fears are confirmed. You log on to check Terrence’s account and you see that he has posted new stories. These do not contain hidden messages, it is far worse than that. They are clearly stories about your life. Things that only a few of your closest confidants know, love affairs that went wrong, embarrassing work situations. Even the dull, deadpan descriptions of everyday life are about your day, he describes what you had for lunch, what clothes you are wearing, always in such a way that it is ostensibly a character in a story, but you know that he has been spying on you, finding out your every secret.

You feel trapped in your house, in your life. Luckily you are going away, on holiday, a business trip, visiting your long-forgotten relatives in Uganda. Two, three weeks away. Maybe in that time Terrence will have forgotten you.

The trip goes well. You no longer feel you’re being followed. You spend the first week in safe places, with people, near civilisation, but eventually the need to get clear away proves too much for you and you take a day out.

You feel happier than you’ve felt for months. You needed this holiday/business trip/visit to Ugandan relatives.

But then, in the distance, you see a figure. You recognise him even from this distance. It is Terrence Oblong. There is nothing you can do, you are totally secluded, the only person on the mountain, beach, deserted car park. You try to phone for help, but there is no signal this high up/in this particular car park.

As he draws near you can see that he is armed. He intends to kill you, write you off like a scrubbed out first draft of a sentence which just goes on too long with too little punctuation that could say the same thing in less than half the words. You have no choice. To kill or be killed.

You reach for your gun/knife/wooden saucepan/tiger and shoot/stab/hit him with the saucepan/release the tiger.

Terrence Oblong lies dead. You root through his things, hoping to find some clues as to who he is, who his comrades are, but all you find are his ABCTales account details.

This reminds you, he has friends on ABCTales. You need to convince then that Terrence still lives, so that they too don’t start to hunt for you. You start posting stories in his name, hoping that they are similar enough in style so as not to betray you. This is your first attempt, your first story writing as Terrence Oblong. You re-read your work. It is very good. Well done.